I noticed after I got back from ST. Thomas that I had some dust specs on the sensor on my Nikon D100 camera… They got rather annoying during mothers day weekend when I had to edit ever picture I took to get rid of the black spots. I have been researching the web for the last couple of weeks on how to actually clean my camera’s sensor. There are a lot of different people saying a lot of different things. Apparently Nikon does not want people in America or Europe to clean their own sensors, but if you live in Japan it is perfectly fine.. Does not make sense to me but so I went ahead and started looking on how to clean mine.
One web site I found was Cleaning sensors by Thom Hogan. It is what I used for the basis of cleaning mine. But the problem I was having is how expensive the Sensor Swab/Brushes were. So I went to the local camera shop and asked them how they cleaned peoples cameras when they were brought in. They only recommended using a blower to clean the dust and if that did not work they sent the back to Nikon to get them cleaned. They also said it was required to use the Nikon AC adapter (which they were selling for $89, and amazon has it for $65.) to make the shutter lock up. (See the camera has the option to lock the mirror up, but it is disabled unless you have the AC adapter plugged in. Bad things can happen if the mirror/shutter falls down while you have something in there…) Well I did not want to spend $89 on the ac adapter so I just bought the blower which was $4.95.
But while I was reading about all the different methods of cleaning the sensor, every one (except the local camera shop) was recommending the Sensor Brush from Visible Dust. The only problem I had was that it was VERY expensive. I then found another place selling a different brush called the DSLR Brush, but when you look at it, it looks like a regular brush that you can pick up at the local craft store. So I went to the local Michaels and picked up a couple of these Brushes.
They cost about $2.99 a piece, and looked to be almost the same as the ones these places where selling, they were a quality nylon brush. I then went home and first tried the blower alone. What I did was put a freshly charged battery in the camera, and then took it in to a dark room and set it to manual mode and set the F-stop to bulb mode. This way I could keep the shutter open while blowing air across the sensor. The reason you want to do this in a dark room is you are actually exposing the sensor and if it is in a bright place you could unintentionally ruin it. Well the blower worked a little bit, but I still had some places on the sensor that had some dust on it. (It is microscopic and you won’t be able to see it with the naked eye. Also remember that where ever the dust shows up on the image is reversed and flipped on the sensor. For example if it is in the bottom right corner of the image, then the dust is in the top left of the sensor.)
So now it was the make or break point with the brush. On one of the sites I was reading they were taking the brush and blowing air through it to statically charge it so that when it “touched” the dust, it would attract the dust to it. So I took one of the brushes out of the wrapper and used the blower on it about 10 or 15 times. I then opened the shutter again with the bulb mode trick above, and did 1 swipe across the sensor with the larger brush. After that, I put the lens back on and took a test picture of the sky outside. To my surprise it got most of the dust, but there was still some left. So I repeated the process over again (blow on the brush, then one swipe). Each time I did it I took a test image and then compared it to the previous to see where I still had dust on the sensor. After about 30 or 40 minutes I have gotten most of the dust off of the sensor. I still have a couple of very small specs left and will work today on getting those off. One way to tell exactly where the dust is, is to set the F-stop to something like F22, and then take a picture completely out of focus. The dust should show up as “infocus” and sharp black dots.
here is a picture of the brushes and blower I got:
N.B. This method is NOT supported by Nikon and if you damage your camera the repair will be extremely expensive. When you are working on your camera do so at your own risk, if you have any doubt at all about doing this, DON’T, send it to a professional to have it cleaned. I will not be held liable for any damages you do to your camera by trying to reproduce what I have done here.
